Theme Week 11/20/2015: Winter

Ikiru, by Akira Kurosawa 1952. A film about a bureaucrat who has wasted his years away working and gaining nothing from it. His doctor tells him that he has stomach cancer and he has half a year to live. He wants to do something to make a difference before he dies, so he personally begs for funding to turn a barren cesspool into a children's park. When it is built, he spends his last night alive sitting and swinging on the swing-set in the park during a snow storm singing a slow and haunting song about lament for ones life.